Question about long(ish) distance power

1st Official Post

    I only recently discovered IC (or modding in general, I had no idea there were so many great mods) and I recently started my first game with IC. I have a little base setup with a bunch of solar panels for most of my power connected to an MFE. I have 2 miners, and originally I powered them with rechargeable batteries, but that was time intensive so I get extra MFE's to power them with energy crystals. The problem is, if I try to use diamond drills, I still need to micromanage my miners since they go through power pretty quick.


    I figured a good solution would be to use HV cables. I can deal with getting like 10% or so loss (it's 100-150 distance so it should be less than 10% even) if I don't have to carry energy over constantly. After laying everything down, I noticed my MFE was draining energy extremely quickly. Now my miner is hooked up directly to the LV transformer (it goes HV cable -> HV transformer -> MV transformer -> LV transformer -> Miner), and from testing with it, it appears that a ton of power simply goes to waste because each pulse over HV is so big but the miner can't use that much.


    Is there any easy way around this? I could set up an MFE over there as well, but then I'd manually have to turn off the transformers next to my solar plant otherwise that MFE at my miner would just soak it all up until it's full (and then I'd have to transfer it back over to the solar plant again, incurring the loss a second time, once the miner hit bedrock). Ideally I'd like power to only be sent on demand and simply use something like a batbox as a buffer for the extra power sent over that the miner can't use right away, but I'm not sure if that's possible.

    That's not it. The MFE was at almost 600k energy, and that single diamond miner drained 200k worth in less than 2 minutes. I know they drain power fast, but it's nowhere near that fast.


    Either way, it's easily tested, if I hook up a miner directly to an MFE (well with transformer of course), and another miner that's hooked up to a cable that first goes to 2k EU and then back down to 32, the second miner will run out of power a million times faster. I'm guessing it's because the miner requests more power the second it's used any, but a HV cable can only send in 2k pulses, way more than the miner needs or can hold.

    The batbox creates the exact same problem. Power is transferred over the wire until the bat box hits 40k. Then every time the miner goes off the batbox supplies energy, and another pulse is sent to the batbox over the wire to fill it back up, creating the same loss as before.


    The only way around this is to make sure that no power is sent until there's enough room for it all on the receiving end, and I'm not sure if that's possible.

    Quote from Morthis

    The batbox creates the exact same problem. Power is transferred over the wire until the bat box hits 40k. Then every time the miner goes off the batbox supplies energy, and another pulse is sent to the batbox over the wire to fill it back up, creating the same loss as before.


    The only way around this is to make sure that no power is sent until there's enough room for it all on the receiving end, and I'm not sure if that's possible.


    do you have buildcraft and Additional Pipes installed?
    there's one interesting way to do power teleportation over long distances but there are losses involved.
    Requires the Power Teleport pipes and one of two mods on the forums here: one two


    I'm using one for now but want to try out two but that'll be after I get off my lazy butt to change stuff around and finally rip out the portal gun mod (hardly use it anyway, could just use teleporters)


    as to mining? I just use BC's quarries. Any ores get fed into my processing system and any dirt and cobble becomes recycler fodder and anything else gets dropped into a chest.

    Quote from Rick

    It isnt any problem for me are you sure they drain alot more than supposed to? I mean 20 eu/tick is 400 eu per second for each miner.

    Yeah, I just double checked it again, maybe my math is off somewhere but this seems wrong.


    Here's the setup I tested it with. Two MFE's next to the same redstone torch.


    MFE one -> LV transformer -> Miner with OV and diamond drill.
    MFE two -> MV transformer (powered by redstone) -> HV transformer (powered by redstone) -> 100 pieces of HV wire -> HV transformer -> MV transformer -> LV transformer -> Miner with OV and diamond drill.



    I put one energy crystal in both MFE so they each have 100k power. Remove the redstone torch between them so they start powering the miners. The second miner shuts down due to lack of power when the first MFE still has 65k power left. As far as I understand, the iron wire should only have a loss of ~5%, instead over 50% of my power is lost. Any suggestions on what might cause this. I'm also open to alternative ways to power stuff instead, for now I'll just keep carrying energy crystals to them.

    I think it is something to do with pulse wastage, as you mentioned higher up.


    I've heard of other people having similar problems with mfsu's supplying Matter Fabs.


    I also read something about wiring some kind of looping feedback into place, but I'm iffy to try that out save in a creative game, where I can't use EV meters or any other metric equipment.

    Quote from FnordMan

    do you have buildcraft and Additional Pipes installed?
    there's one interesting way to do power teleportation over long distances but there are losses involved.
    Requires the Power Teleport pipes and one of two mods on the forums here: one two


    I'm using one for now but want to try out two but that'll be after I get off my lazy butt to change stuff around and finally rip out the portal gun mod (hardly use it anyway, could just use teleporters)


    as to mining? I just use BC's quarries. Any ores get fed into my processing system and any dirt and cobble becomes recycler fodder and anything else gets dropped into a chest.


    I didn't know about the first one. The second one he will run into the same problem as I have my system set up 2 mfsu's to 1 mfsu to mfu to bat box to power converter to any buildcraft machine and both my mfsu's at the front of the line uses massive power. I also got everything so close to gether that there shouldn't be any power loss at all. What I did was make a separate but smaller energy factory with 3 generators and the buildcraft machines run at the same speed as from the massive power loss from the first setup.

    Quote from subzero22


    I didn't know about the first one. The second one he will run into the same problem as I have my system set up 2 mfsu's to 1 mfsu to mfu to bat box to power converter to any buildcraft machine and both my mfsu's at the front of the line uses massive power. I also got everything so close to gether that there shouldn't be any power loss at all. What I did was make a separate but smaller energy factory with 3 generators and the buildcraft machines run at the same speed as from the massive power loss from the first setup.


    Works great for me but i've got a dedicated 32-panel solar array feeding the lowest power converter with #1. (the one that takes 32 max) Dumps the power out to a power teleport pipe.
    When nothing's running I get ~30EU/t feeding the mass fab, right now i've got about 10 or 15 feeding the mass fab as it's powering a quarry at the moment.


    Should I ever actually get around to doing a miner (now that the bedrock bug is fixed) i'll probably set up another 32 panel array for "power teleportation"

    Quote from Rick

    From what i see you use low voltage pulses and like 90% is wasted else that 2th miner should have worked when there still was power.

    The pulse over the HV wire is definitely 2k EU/t. I measured it and would get something like 500 over 4 ticks average (so pulses of 2k happening only occasionally). It also zapped and one shot me quite easily when I accidentally walked a little too close lol.


    That's part of how the transformers work, they won't send a pulse until they've got enough to send one at the voltage they're supposed to work at.

    When I use a miner, portability is the keyword. I don't run a wire out to it, I bring the power generation to the site. My miner setup fits into a 4x2 meter footprint.


    At the back, a generator atop a batbox. One wire goes from the batbox to the miner, another wire goes from the first into the pump beside it. In front of both sits a double chest. Usually, one can of coalfuel is just about enough for the dig.


    If you're using a diamond drill and an OV Scanner, you can use a geothermal generator and an MFE if you find you don't have enough power otherwise. If you are running wire from your base to a remote site, you're just wasting power.

    I can confirm that there's some kind of issue. I'm not sure if it's a bug or if I'm just wiring things wrong, but my energy is disappearing somewhere.


    I have a power plant that stores its energy in an MFSU and upvolts it to EV, then has a bunch of fully-insulated iron cables going out the sides and supplying everything in my base. It's also hooked up to a miner, which is no more than a hundred blocks away. According to the EU-meter, the miner only takes ~25 EU per tick, and one induction furnace takes 1. With 5% or so power loss, that should be no more 28 EU per tick. However, even though my solar panels produce 32 EU per tick, the total energy in my MFSU decreases while the miner and nothing else runs.


    Lugging crystals back and forth is annoying, and generators don't produce enough energy to run a miner at full speed unless you have a lot of them (3 geothermal, 5 regular, or an insane amount of solars), so I'd rather use cables even if it's inefficient. But I wish I knew why my energy was just disappearing.

    TL;DR: MFSU input at 61, output measured between 22 and 32, MFSU does not charge. What gives?


    Hello World,


    I'd like to pipe in with the "where the fsck does my energy go?" crew.


    I run a SSP world with IC² 1.23, BC 2.2.4 and Power Converters 1.2.3. My MFSU seems to lose energy, as in "does not charge up despite the input being way higher than the output".


    The Numbers [tm]:


    Test Case 1: MFSU connected to Energy Link powering Refinery via 52 units of HV cable 4xIns


    • Loss per packet: cable length times EU/b: 52 * 0.8 = 41.6
    • Connection efficiency: received energy divided by sent energy: (512 - 41.6) / 512 = 0.9187
    • Break even point: Input reading times Connection efficiency: 61 * 0.9187 = 56.0407


    So with a constant input reading of 61 EU/t, I expect the MFSU to stay at its charge level at an output reading of ~56 EU/t. At any lower output reading, I expect it to be charging.


    I observe an output reading of 25 EU/t flat and an MFSU GUI with figures dancing below 900-ish EU.


    Test Case 2: MFSU connected to Energy Link powering Quarry via 100 units of HV cable 4xIns


    • Loss per packet: 100 * 0.8 = 80
    • Connection efficiency: (512 - 80) / 512 = 0.8437
    • Break even point: 61 * 51.4657


    Output reading 22 EU/t. Still, MFSU not charging.



    So, I thought maybe it's the Energy Link or whatever, and I constructed a load containing only IC² blocks.


    Case 3: MFSU connected to redstoned MV transformer -> MFE -> rs LV trans -> Batpack -> Mass Fabricator chain, via 67 units of HV cable 4xIns


    • Loss per packet: 67 * 0.8 = 53.6
    • Connection efficiency: (512 - 53.6) / 512 = 0.8953
    • Break even point: 61 * 54.6133


    The ever-hungry, but batpack limited Mass Fabricator puts a 32 EU/t load on the end of the chain. Output reading is about 44 EU/t. You guessed it, MFSU not charging up.


    Sad, sad panda. ;(


    Recreating Case 1 with an MV transformer between Energy Link and cable made no difference.


    The 61 EU/t come from my solar panels. If I connect my reactor line feeding in another 111 EU/t, the MFSU finally shows that it is capable of holding a charge after all.
    I got the "energy loss per block" (EU/b) number of 0.8 from the wiki.


    I suspect a bug in the energy packet handling. But as I am an IC² noob (this is my first world), could please someone check my work? Can someone reproduce, or even explain this?


    cheers,
    ThetaPhi

    Your observations are valid, but the correct kit is an MFSU, 3-6 lapotronic crystals, the transformers and enough glass fiber cable to service things.



    If you insist on using HV cable to supply things then you're still going to need some kind of buffering (a batbox per mining rig will suffice), but you'll need to use a redstone clock to gate the step-up transformer back at base with a pulsing waveform. It will have to be on for only the portion of the cycle that correlates to the needed portion of a single packet. I've noticed that the fully upgraded miner and pump tends to draw about 24 eU/t while running well (less with the pump). That translates in to ~ 20.48/2048 per tick, or 1/10th duty cycle per mining rig. If you run two rigs at once a standard 5-clock with a pulse former will work. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_circuits (I'd use redpower2 now, but it's doable).


    It should also be noted that each redstone tick is 0.1 seconds, where each IC2 power tick is 0.05 seconds (real time).

    Quote from MJEvans

    Your observations are valid, but the correct kit is an MFSU, 3-6 lapotronic crystals, the transformers and enough glass fiber cable to service things. If you insist on using HV cable to supply things

    I thought that transferring power over long distances *was* the only intended use for 2048-EU-voltage cables and transformers. As for whether MFSUs were intended to be portable, I guess that depends on whether they have a chance of getting destroyed by a wrench (as stated by Alblaka, that was the reason for the chance).



    Quote from MJEvans

    then you're still going to need some kind of buffering (a batbox per mining rig will suffice), but you'll need to use a redstone clock to gate the step-up transformer back at base with a pulsing waveform. It will have to be on for only the portion of the cycle that correlates to the needed portion of a single packet. I've noticed that the fully upgraded miner and pump tends to draw about 24 eU/t while running well (less with the pump). That translates in to ~ 20.48/2048 per tick, or 1/10th duty cycle per mining rig. If you run two rigs at once a standard 5-clock with a pulse former will work. http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Redstone_circuits (I'd use redpower2 now, but it's doable).


    It should also be noted that each redstone tick is 0.1 seconds, where each IC2 power tick is 0.05 seconds (real time).

    I wanted to have a general-purpose power plant, so I'd need a separate redstone timing system for every single thing that receives power, heh. Neat idea though, thanks!

    I believe that a /wrench/ should have a chance of destroying things, but even more so that an /electric wrench/ should -never- destroy things. As such I have fixed his balance mistake with the offered mod/patch on all of the IC2 installs I control.


    The whole point of advanced technology is to make life better. It's silly to think that an advanced wrench might not return something (or that if it doesn't it should have the same pathetic success rate a normal wrench does).